The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay
DZ’s seemingly quiet yell across the landscape and up to Stan.
Stan decided to go for the most obvious method of destroying it first. He backed up to the very edge of the pillar, wanting to be as far away from the crystal as possible when he tried his method. He notched an arrow and sent it directly into the centre of the crystal. There was a superheated flash that made Stan’s vision go white for a minute, but when it cleared he saw that the only thing left of the crystal was a block of bedrock that was set on fire.
“Just shoot the crystals, DZ!” Stan called down to his friend. “That makes them blow up!”
“I’ll tell you what, Stan!” came DZ’s voice from down below. “You destroy the crystals by teleporting around up there, and I’ll shoot them down from down here!”
“Sounds like a plan!” Stan yelled back. He looked around and saw that, indeed, each of the pillars did seem to have a crystal rotating on top of it. He knew that they would not be able to properly fight the dragon until all those crystals were destroyed. As scared as he was, he had to give credit to the King. This truly was the ideal hiding place for anything valuable.
Stan saw DZ taking aim at the obelisk immediately to the left of him, so Stan turned to the right and drew another Ender Pearl from his inventory. He threw it with all his might, and once again he squeezed his eyes shut. Within a few seconds, there was considerable pain in his leg again. When he opened his eyes, he was standing on a different pillar, with yet another crystal ominously revolving before him. And again, with one arrow, the crystal exploded in a burst of fire.
Relieved, Stan gave a quick glance to his left just in time to see DZ’s crystal explode, having been struck in the centre by a land-to-air arrow. However, out of the corner of his eye, Stan saw something that made his stomach drop out: a flash of purple light, followed by the sound of the rush of beating wings. Stan barely had enough time to whip around and pull out his axe to drive it between the dragon’s eyes. The axe only left a slight dent in the dragon’s hide, which was quickly repaired by the nearest remaining crystal. Nonetheless, it had the desired effect, and the dragon changed its trajectory and fled.
“Sorry, Stan!” came Charlie’s yell from back down on the ground. “It flew away from us and came at you. I tried to shoot it but I missed.”
“Well, aim better next time!” snapped Stan irritably. They were in the middle of an extremely dangerous fight, and there was no way that he could afford to fight a dragon on these pillars. One head butt and the dragon would knock him down to his death.
Stan busied himself again with destroying the crystals. He saw DZ blow up another of the crystals, so he teleported to the next pillar over, destroying this crystal with another arrow. With DZ shooting from the ground and Stan using his teleport-and-shoot strategy to great effect, it wasn’t long before Stan sank one last arrow into the solitary remaining crystal. The accompanying explosion marked the end of the dragon’s healing capabilities.
When DZ saw the last burst of fire come from the last obsidian obelisk, he let out a yell of wild excitement. For now, the dragon would be possible to fight. Moments later, Stan appeared next to DZ in a burst of purple smoke.
“That’s the last of ’em,” said Stan with a sigh.
“Awesome,” replied DZ. “How’d those Ender Pearls work out for you?”
“Great,” answered Stan. “My knees are killing me, but other than that I’m great. Wanna go kill a dragon now?”
“Let’s do this!” cried DZ, and their sense of excitement building, they ran to join Oob and Charlie.
“Hey guys!” exclaimed Charlie as he drew back his pickaxe after striking the now-fleeing dragon. “Are the crystals all gone?”
“Yep, Stan just destroyed the last one,” said DZ. “Have you guys figured out anything about how the dragon attacks?”
“Well, from what I’ve seen, the only thing that the dragon does is just keep flying towards us and trying to head-butt us, but if we keep on hitting it in the face when it gets close enough, we should manage to kill it pretty quickly.”
“Really?” asked Stan, raising an eyebrow. “That’s all you guys have been doing? Just hitting it when it gets near you? And that’s been hurting it?”
“Yes,” replied Oob. “There has been a surprising lack of difficulty in fighting the dragon. The dragon has not come close to hurting either of us using its current attack pattern.”
“Well,” said Stan, looking around, “I guess the difficulty of this place isn’t supposed to be fighting the dragon itself, but destroying the crystals, fighting the dragon, and avoiding the Endermen all at the same time.”
“Yeah,” said DZ, nodding. “That sounds right. I guess we were right to come here as a team. The King seems to have picked this place as a good defence against just one or two people, not five.”
“And I gotta say,” added Charlie as he looked around. “Kat’s been doing a really good job fighting off the Endermen. I haven’t seen any since we first – Oh my God!”
Stan looked at what had made Charlie scream, and his jaw dropped. For he had been looking at Kat as she pulled her sword out of the back of an Enderman she had just killed, completely oblivious to the dragon as it set its sights on her, swooping down upon her. It never got there, though, for just as Kat sensed the impending force about to slam into her, she spun around in time to see Charlie hurl himself in front of the dragon.
Charlie’s pickaxe came down a little too late. Kat didn’t see where it hit, but the dragon thrashed around in agony, its front left claw wildly cutting a dent through the centre of Charlie’s chestplate. As the dragon flew up into the black sky, Charlie tumbled across the white ground for a few blocks. Kat’s confusion and fear of the dragon condensed into an immediate desire to help her friend, now lying lifeless near the base of the nearby obsidian pillar.
Kat’s heart pounded in her chest as she ran over and knelt down to examine Charlie. She rolled him over and to her immense relief, discovered that he was not dead, though his face was contorted in intense pain.
“Charlie! Thank God. Are you OK?” asked Kat as she pulled off his chestplate to examine his wound.
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” grunted Charlie, wincing as the removal of the chestplate revealed a slash through his shirt and across his chest and stomach. “It’s not deep,” he added, seeing the sceptical look on Kat’s face. “I’ll be fine. Have you seen my pickaxe, though?”
“Hey, DZ, what’s that on the dragon’s face?” asked Stan, as he noticed something glinting on the dragon’s snout. He was determined not to let the dragon find its way over to Kat and Charlie or to Oob, who was off wandering. Stan stood with his axe at the ready as the dragon swooped in for another attack.
It didn’t matter that DZ had not responded. The dragon came into close range, and Stan had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Charlie’s pickaxe was still attached to the dragon’s face, lodged deeply into its right nostril. It looked ridiculous, but Stan still waited to bring his axe down into the dragon’s nose before he let the laugh out.
“Oh, God, that’s great. That is priceless, don’t you think, DZ?” Stan got out between laughs, but when he looked to DZ for a response, what he saw made him immediately forget about how the dragon looked. DZ’s arm traced an arc through the air, a clear testament to the perfect trajectory of the Ender Pearl he had just thrown directly at the dragon.
“What are you doing?” shouted Stan. DZ turned around and looked Stan in the eye.
“Ending this,” DZ replied simply before disappearing in a burst of purple smoke.
Stan looked around, bewildered, finally realizing that DZ must have landed on the actual dragon by the way the dragon was now thrashing around in midair. Now sure beyond a doubt that something had been knocked loose in DZ’s head, it was all Stan could do to watch the scene in horrific anticipation.